KPFA - Radio Wolinsky

Vanessa Veselka, whose latest novel is “The Great Offshore Grounds,” in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

“The Great Offshore Grounds” is an epic novel about two sisters on a quest to find themselves during the upheavals of the current era. It’s a detailed examination of feminism, of lives lived on the edge, and of life in the parts of America we hear little about.

Vanessa Veselka’s first novel, “Zazen,” has just been reissued by Vintage. Published by a small press over a decade ago, it looks at the travails of young adults set against the backdrop of an ever-increasing political violence in America.

Vanessa Veselka, the daughter of journalist Linda Ellerbee, left home at the age of fifteen and early in her life lived the life of a homeless vagabond, eventually becoming a professional musician in the Pacific Northwest, a union organizer, and a writer of fiction.

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P.D. James (1920-2014) was considered, along with Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey and Dorothy L. Sayers, one of the greatest British mystery writers. Most of her books involved a police commander and poet named Adam Dalgliesh, though she wrote several other novels, including the science fiction novel, “Children of Men,” which became a much-admired film in 2006.

Two years before that novel was published, on February 1, 1990, Richard Lupoff and Richard Wolinsky interviewed P.D. James in the KPFA studios while she was on tour for her most recent Dalgliesh novel, “Devices and Desires.”  Most of the interview centered on her career.

After the interview, she wrote several more Dalgliesh novels, and concluded her career in 2011 with a murder mystery sequel to “Pride and Prejudice, “Death Comes to Pemberley,” which is available streaming through PBS Masterpieces, Amazon and Apple TV. The Dalgliesh adaptations are not currently streaming. “Children of Men” is available to rent on several services.

“Probabilities” began in 1977 on KPFA as a science fiction/fantasy program, and expanded into mysteries and other genres shortly afterward. The name was dropped in 1995, long after the program had begun to include mainstream fiction and narrative non-fiction. In 2001, recording switched from analog to digital, and the surviving interviews each must be digitized and re-edited from the original back-up cassettes.

Black & White photo: P.D. James in 1998, ANL/Shutterstock.

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Richard Powers, author of “Bewilderment,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded via zencastr on September 27, 2021.

Richard Powers is one of America’s most distinguished novelists. In 2006, his novel The Echo Maker, won the National Book Award and was a finmalist for the Pulitzer, and his most recent novel, The Overstory, was short-listed for the Booker Prize and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

“Bewilderment” is the story of a father and son relationship, set in a world slightly different from our own, in which a president much like Donald Trump won re-election. The father is an astrobiologist exploring planets based on spectroscopic input whose wife died before the book opens; he is dealing with his continued grief and with issues involving his brilliant son who has a host of psychological issues. Long-listed for the National Book Award, and the subject of excellent reviews, “Bewilderment” is a meditation on grief, on love, on science and on the wonders of nature.

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This podcast was first posted on February 26, 2017.

George Saunders, author of the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky.

George Saunders is the highly acclaimed author of several short story collections, including “Tenth of December,” “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline,” “In Persuasion Nation” and others, along with political commentary that recently appeared in The New Yorker and other magazines.

His latest novel takes place in the form of a fictional oral history from the perspective of several ghosts who survive after death in a Washington DC graveyard in 1862. Willie Lincoln, the favored son of Abraham Lincoln, has gotten sick and died, and during the course of the book, the President visits his son’s tomb.

The book deals with the Civil War, with the relationship of blacks and whites in America, with beliefs about life and death, and with the relationship of history and memory. Lincoln in the Bardo won the 2017 Man Booker Prize. His latest book is a collection of essays, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading and Life, published in January, 2021.

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Daniel Handler, author of “Poison for Breakfast” by Lemony Snicket, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky.

Daniel Handler writes young adult/children’s books under the name “Lemony Snicket,” along with novels for adults under his own name. Lemony Snicket was narrator for the 13-book “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” and “wrote” several other books as well. “A Series of Unfortunate Events” was a not so successful film and a very successful Netflix TV series.

In this in-depth interview, he talks about how he came to write “Poison for Breakfast,” his love of noir, the origins of characters in “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” his early years as a writer, and how he handled the pandemic shutdown. Recorded at his home, this is the first Radio Wolinsky in eighteen months created as an in-person interview.

Photos: Richard Wolinsky.

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